atheism a new religion for the west. atheism simply means lacking a belief in a higher power so if so if that's what you're talking about then of course not it's a simple expression of one's head one's own personal beliefs which is more feeling than anything if you're talking about something like humanism which is a positive expression of seeing the world through the lens of science having human flourishing as a highest value understanding ethics and you know rational approach to the world that goes along with that and making your own media one line is the prince between the two that's often went to different and what's the difference between the two is there any meaningful difference so the meaningful difference is that atheism is a simple war with the simple definition of a lack of belief not even necessarily something that rises to the level of denying all other religions but simply a lack of belief in a higher power in the same reason a christian doesn't believe in vishnu or hindu or vishnu or a law we don't believe in any of those in any of those other other. deities but if

you actually build a building beyond that dedicated belief in a higher power you know in a higher human flourishing and you bill build out from that a system of ethics and an approach to the world then i think that you know that equally to religion even though it's fundamentally different in several ways ok lawrence i notice you already want to jump in go ahead atheism means it's latin for without god or you're refusing the possibility of a theistic approach. there's some logical problems with just addressing that it's not just to deny or saying we do we don't need to it's saying there isn't a theistic back. backbone to creation or to whatever surrounds us in nature and so it's more of a position and the problem with atheism i see is that it requires someone to know that anywhere in the whole universe there isn't a god there isn't a theistic process and that's impossible because our knowledge is so small in terms

of the universe that we couldn't prosody pronounce ourselves and saying we know that nowhere in the whole universe is no such thing as a theistic there's no such thing as a god now if jason was to say he was agnostic and saying well i just don't know if there is a god that i would understand better but atheism is a position that it puts itself against theistic position it's the antithesis of a theistic position now i must say this i still believe it's a it's a belief system because you everybody has to believe one of two things either you believe in an eternal god or you believe in internal matter you only have the two choices and either way you're looking at so soon learn the i'm sorry got it jump in there isn't a something it's belief it's a point of the program jason your head. i don't know if you want to call it so these are the ultimate and so-called i don't let me go to. reply go ahead we'll go to rob go ahead so lauren said specifically you must believe in god or you must believe in a purely naturalistic world and that's a false dichotomy it's a logical fallacy he also says he also put forth that atheists have the position

that we are holding that there is no god no matter what i already said it's a lack of belief if you approach the world in a prophet in a proper manner the burden of proof is there on the person making the positive assertion the positive assertion is the extraordinary claim that there is a magical being in the sky that created the entire world that is the one that has the burden of proof you know lawrence and other religious people have to prove that to others otherwise the only logical position to have the only intellectually. only position of intellectual integrity is to reserve. is to not accept a position that has not been proven ok rob now go ahead please do as an atheist take a position. ok well first of all when many people refer to religion they refer to it as organized religion and that's a big problem with atheism and and why you can't refer to atheism as a religion because there's no real organization to it it's like having a meeting of anarchists generally and an i pad how did know is that i don't have it

wrong and it doesn't matter because they don't want to vote out yet has but you know they don't not very well they don't want to vote on anything and i i think i guess i might list myself as as an atheist but i i like to think that hopefully there's some kind of higher power but i don't want to look at it in the classical way of some some god like guy saying you know that rob driving down the cross bronx expressway the day's going to get a car accident break his arm i mean that's that's a real religious extremism but i just think the big problem right now in our in this country's specifically and in the world is what religion has always polarized us and separated us and torn us apart and caused wars and it's too structured a belief system and too regimented and i also think that religion is losing step in this country especially because people are not motivated to follow religious leaders but rather follow sports figures or religious leader lawrence jump and

that's a very good only i don't mean let's go to lawrence is going to lawrence first go ahead i mean if we take if we have. that can't be true if you take a look at all the. gallup polls that are done over the last twenty years over fifty percent of the american and canadian i'm canadian so i'm afraid that the comerica population also believe in a young earth that's under ten thousand years another thirty five percent believe that god created man so it's eighty five percent of the population is theist. i'm sorry i know that fifteen percent of the population is controlling the media or perhaps the educational system but eighty five percent of the population is theist in the us and in canada and certainly i don't see an atheistic. president in us at. coming to power they have to go for the religious vote because it's such a powerful vote in the us it is less so in canada but such a powerful vote in the u.s. so i don't understand what rob was saying i do know this though that it's maybe not as easy as you think mention that it just wasn't really a rational thought it was more than

a science in that it wasn't rational to believe in a creator but that it's the most rational thing in the world to believe in and a creator if i have a computer and really no one is going to be i think i can jump in here ok all right jason intelligent it's go to jail it's going to jason go ahead fair time. yes so the first thing we don't want to do is have another logical fallacy of appealing to the majority no matter how many think how many people believe in a certain thing that doesn't make it true or false but i can recognize rob's criticism of the humanist community and the organized atheist community the ones that have that live according to their values and have deeply held beliefs they care very much about that we build communities and families around you know not to have an advertisement the military association of atheism freethinkers american humanist association the internationally missed unethical union the american ethical union the society for humanistic judaism these are all organized groups that have come together and are trying to build communities communities of values to help people not only to know that how not only so know the facts and the values

of humanism but also to live communities in an atheistic lifestyle even if they don't necessarily label themselves have humanism or agree with every single thing they can come together and say we only under you know we understand the world through the lens of science we care very much about humanity and the advancement of humanity and we are going to build these organizations not in a hierarchical dogmatic way but in a loving caring and compassionate way and those communities are out there so when you go out and look at the look for those communities you will find them if you if you just look around for human it's communities and even atheist communities meetup dot com or google or or any of these modern technology you look around for road canada the u.s. australia afghanistan if i go to rob those are noble ideas what's wrong with them you don't need religion to believe in the u.s. i think most people would agree with what jason had to say well let me jump in on that what i think is interesting is i was raised as a jew i'm not practicing i was bar mitzvah and my grandfather was bar mitzvah but

he came to the united states from russia and he had where the tallest hill and he pretty much i don't see one and say we're not is judaism but he never really want to synagogue anymore but he used to talk to me of the the bible and he gave me an interesting comparison. he used to also read grimm's fairy tales to me and stories that all had a moral lesson and some kind of parable and he used to say it is the law that's what the bible is like it's telling you of tales of more ality doesn't mean they're true and i think that the big problem especially with christianity more so is they tend to literalize everything the do one thing i do like about judaism is it teaches tell musically and it teaches through stories and parables and moral lessons like that and someone tells you you're going to be smote or that you have to pray to an actual existing deity which is one other reason why it's not a popular religion i think one of the big ironies of judaism it's a very liberal religion if you're born into it the big difficulty is if you do you

want to convert to judaism and make it nearly impossible whereas if you want to create convert to christianity it's like ok sign this raise your hand and say i'm a christian a good if you're in. you aren't going to jump it is that you got to go to school for like sixty years even if your idea years old you know they're going to toss a ball for you ok but when it's good. yes somewhere in here we've lost your initial question which was whether atheism is the new religion. and i think that i don't first of all i don't think it's a new religion and yes i agree with jason that humanism is perhaps the religious manifestation of atheism but my point is that all humans as individuals are religious beings they all believe in something they can the knowledge only goes so far so they have to use a belief or a face system somewhere and where it concerns the origins of things and the origin the universe origin themselves where we come from whatever reason for being in the universe and where we're going these are all religious questions that human suppose i don't think dogs do i don't think any other end life form does i'm

a communication is limited with my dog but he doesn't seem to think to abstractly and so i would i would go yes we are looking at an atheistic religion i do i must say one thing though i would i would. i would i would keep away from the idea that religion is the the bane of all existence and the opiate of the people and it's a problem everywhere that religion has its problems because people have their problems just as atheism has its problems i mean we can't say that stalin pol pot amal were christian a religious in any way they were communists atheists and they killed more people than all the wars put together. up to that stage and i'm not doing a competition i'm not saying that anything bad is good because something bad is bad or i'm just saying how many people did the crusades and heartless you're right we're all going to go back to you here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on atheism and religion stay with r.t. .

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welcome back to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle to mind you were talking about whether atheism is a religion. ok rob i'm going to go back to you in the middle of a pearl of wisdom go right ahead well i was saying that just because you're at a desk pot like pol pot or stalin is has nothing to do with religion it's more

about political tyranny there is political tyranny from the ayatollah khomeini who was wildly religious so you can't say that a godless country is going to produce morally you know bad people and i was also adding that when we're talking about wars and slaughter the crusades were pretty bad. the irish and the english seem to be from fighting over religion for years and then there was this thing called the spanish inquisition that wasn't very nice to my people another thing i want to point out about religion organized religion that i find flabbergasting to me is the intractability of religious groups i mean the catholics wonder why their popularity is waning that the pope who left today was still telling people in africa not to wear condoms harboring pedophiles and putting together rules and regulations that are going to recall regulations but just ludicrous rules that date back hundreds of years that are just not in keeping

with modern times so of course they're going to lose followers ok lawrence i think you should respond here because you're the only man out here so good lawrence for us. i appreciate that. actually i agree with what was just said i'm not too fond of religion myself it's usually used to manipulate control groups . i'm more into a relationship if there is a living god then i would believe it's possible to have a relationship with god and that's a very personal thing i can be done in groups but it's always a personal race ship that's the whole evangelical christian community thinks that way but i would have i would have to agree with what is said i think religion is a bad thing in fact if you remember in terms of christianity it is the religious people that got jesus crucified ok jason very interesting point go right ahead well i just want to be ok the point is that. i was on a television show a couple of years ago a number of years ago and president bush was still president he was saying god the lord told me to do something and i found that really horrible and offensive so that

night on a particular show i said well you know god spoke to me the other day and he told me to stop eating green peppers and the host was outraged at this it was like god will never tell you that i'd like well how do you believe president bush was told by god to go bomb somebody white why can't god tell me to stop eating something that's causing me severe gas you know it's bizarre we have this crazy belief system that's going to not it's going to tell somebody in power to do something crazy but he's not going to speak to the to the masses jason jumping on those guys like me. yeah when i think i think one of the important things that we need to hit on this show when we talk about atheism versus religion or even humanism versus traditional religious values is one of the fundamental differences is this dogmatic in here is to belief this celebration that because i believe something that is inherently a good thing you know this insistence that i should take evidence and if it fits what i look at if it fits what i believe already i should celebrate that if that it

doesn't fit i should call it the devil and put it aside this rejection of reality in favor of preconceived notions is the most dangerous part of religion that is something that is absolutely rejected by all non-theists to beliefs and practices and specially humanism so it's very important to understand that as we look at religious people as we do interfaith alliances and atheist religious alliances if we try to wake the world a better place what we need to be on both sides of the equation most vigilant against is those pitfalls that are most dangerous and that celebration of ignorance over evidence and celebration of myth over reality that's something that we need to be most most concerned about and it's one of the biggest differences between humanistic beliefs and practices and and some of the you know some of the traditional religious values and some of the expressions of those traditional beliefs lawrence you want to you are disagreeing there go ahead please that we suddenly have transcript of well. yes howard dogmatically. lawrence go ahead if he

is dogmatic atheists are dogmatic about their position concerning evolution evolution is the basis of their religion it's the at least the evolutionary theory of hunters into humans theory is the basis they have to because as i said before you either believe in something supernatural or you believe in eternal natural and so the they stick to the natural trouble is the evidence for evolution isn't there he says how many times i hear jason just say that anybody that doesn't think like him must be irrational must be someone who believes in myths and not in reality well i'm sorry i'm a scientist a geneticist and i don't i don't believe in through evolution because i don't see it happening frogs don't become princes in one hundred fifty years in any hundred fifty million years in my lab i don't see it in the fossil record i don't see any evidence for what the evolution is supporting aside from microevolution large changes going from bacteria human just aren't there that's a belief system so it's wrong to say that the theists are not dogmatic about something they're definitely dogmatic about their position concerning natural reason because jason has been on this whole show jason you want to reply to that

please do so because it was a joy so i don't think it's a result not of good will it is it is well for ignorance and so you know all of all the things that we look at in the past you can see you know we adjust our every time we adjust our views in the face of new evidence and new science and new scientific advances were called flip floppers and we believe in nothing every time we recognize the mountain of evidence you know for example for evolution you can go to talk origins dot org that's just not profit website that can answer any creation are starting it because there it's easy to answer it's not that we reject the religious evidence we put the one page of the bible that that page from genesis would put that on one side of the scale and we then we take all of the evidence ever collected from science through history and you know for me i just think the evidence outweighs and it's very simple you know we see it in courts we see it in a court of public opinion creationists put forward a lists one of the one of the institutes they have a list of all of the scientists from any discipline that maybe support creationism

and then to respond to that organization called the national center for science education put it put together the steve project. and they just they only accept people with steve named steve all or esteban or stephanie similar names like steven only in disciplines that are actually related to geology and biology and evolution they have thousands of names with just a hundred or so on the creationist list so to say that evolution is not something that is needed something that i only interest lucidly comes from. so that's a good point so this is not an appeal to not always blinded you to expert opinion and to evidence rob jump in memory the first list came from the creationist side i find it really amusing that that creationists find it hard to believe that dinosaurs walked the earth but they think moses held up a stick turned it into a snake and then part of the red sea it's comical and really tragic in a way and and the religion also becomes even with extreme atheists like the

political spectrum the far left and the far right they're so far apart they come together and they meet in a circle it's it's like an atheist i like bill maher but i've seen him on there calling anybody who's religious a moron that's not right it's just like saying if you don't believe in god you're going to burn in hell it's you know there has to be some middle ground look i know people who are professed atheists and they probably are but they still attend a house of worship because they get some kind of comfort in or it's a social thing and your enjoy a ritual and i'm not going to condemn anybody as for what they think unless it's a real extremism and then i'm going to be bothered by it whether it's an extreme atheist or or a religious fanatic of the boat both of them bother me because they're both fanatics lawrence go ahead jump in isn't all about tolerance then that's what jesus taught being tolerant but west doesn't mean you don't believe there's an absolute truth and certainly i disagree with some of the comments stereotyping that i just

heard rob do concerning creationists i don't know anybody that qualifies under what he just described a creationist i certainly don't. but i am a scientist i go with what i observe. and we can get off on that tangent but we're getting away from your question which is atheism the new religion and yes i think there is a backlash and base well the material of jesus is not hollow and so a lot of the midges from the. let's go to course and so what what i'm hearing is a lot of a lot of people are having a backlash organized religion and i think that's healthy i think the thing is that someone who puts them up as a more puts themselves up as a moral standard as christians or most or what will do then set themselves up for a fall if they can't maintain a moral standard and so however i like the fact of the christianity does have a moral standard has a moral yes or a right this is right or wrong whereas atheism i don't see where moral standards

come from there's no general moral but i mean the right wing was making a come from you know lawrence can't you be more involved i mean can't you be moral and i hate the instantly or can you be moral and and an atheist at the same time of course you can yes i think that you can you can but i think there's a reason for that i think that. there is a god and that he wrote his law in our hearts and so we're born with an innate knowledge of what's right or wrong but i wouldn't i wouldn't predict that from an evolutionary position jason what do you think is an evolved animal we don't put we don't put the dogs in prison so light someone they don't know what's right or from wrong. yet and that's and that's a good point dogs also can't fly to the moon dogs can't you know develop develop legal systems and ethical system and social justice framework. yet again very soon cable will differ on is that religious religion is the most maybe. going to say the understanding is religion is the most common expression of cultural relativism what we have is from

a legit framework we say i have my book and i have my interpretation of my book and that therefore and that is absolute truth that others should adhere to i mean that's why we have thousands of different kinds of christianity the different thing that we do within you know the atheist and humanist tradition is what we do if we try to really do the hard work of understanding what the right approach is in the right situation we take social sciences medical sciences nutritional sciences. political political background in evidence and we try to figure out what the best approach is that increases human flourishing you know that's the value that we approach and for example let's take the burka so you're trying to take it and the religious leader truth or non-truth that's a religion that's the only option we have it's better than just taking whatever's written in an old book i mean there are so approaches here you can actually i think what's really in there is an old joke about martin you have an old works. i wish we had more time around because i love your jokes world in general means we've run out of time here many thanks again my guest in washington and then come back and thanks

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